When color development processing is carried out after a silver halide photographic material is exposed to light, an aromatic primary amine developing agent oxidized with silver halide reacts with a dye forming coupler to form a color image. In this process, color reproduction by a subtractive process is generally utilized. In accordance with this process, color images of yellow, magenta and cyan, which are complementary colors of blue, green and red, respectively, are formed in order to reproduce images of blue, green and red.
Phenol derivatives or naphthol derivatives have hitherto mainly been used as cyan color image forming couplers. However, the color images formed from conventional phenol or naphthol derivatives have preservability problems. For example, color images formed from 2-acylaminophenol cyan couplers as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,367,531, 2,369,929, 2,423,730 and 3,772,002 generally have inferior heat fastness. Color images formed from 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan couplers as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,772,162 and 2,895,826 generally have inferior light fastness, along with those formed from 2-ureidophenol cyan couplers as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,446,622 and 4,333,999. Further, color images formed from 1-hydroxy-2-naphthamide cyan couplers generally have inferior fastness to both light and heat (particularly humidity and heat).
On the other hand, cyan couplers represented by the general formula (I) described below reduce the inherent sensitivity of the photographic emulsion, that is, they are apt to cause desensitization. This leads to difficulty in the design for photographic light-sensitive materials. Moreover, among the cyan couplers represented by the general formula (I), those having a high color forming property and those having the general formula (I) wherein R.sub.2 and R.sub.3 combine with each other to form a ring are particularly disadvantageous in that unexposed white background areas of the photographic materials containing these couplers tends to color cyan with the lapse of time.